Restoration and Justice

Below is the 18^8h in the August Catholic Social Teaching series: Restoration and Justice

There is no getting around the connection between the need for justification and how the Resurrection is the ultimate answer to that need.  Creation’s right ordering has been damaged.  Without correcting the immediate effects, God created a means to transform creation beyond it.  The means is the Resurrection. Here is what St. Paul thought about this

We have learned that disobedience to God separates us from His presence. We read this in Genesis when the devil, appearing as a snake, appears to Eve and tells her a lie. She immediately goes to Adam and repeats the lie. They go the Tree of Life and take a bite of the apple. This disobedience (“do not eat from the Tree of Life”) caused a rift in mankind’s relationship with our Creator.

God, because of his love for his creation, his children, was willing to provide a way for the relationship to be restored. It would be a way that would be loving, compassionate, merciful. It would take in the inherent weakness of the human person.

Here are some Old and New Testament verses that prophesize how God’s Healing & Reconciliation for his children will occur.

1. Isaiah 53:5:  He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, knowing pain, Like one from whom you turn your face, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.

2. Psalm 147:3: Healing the broken-hearted and binding up their wounds.

3. Peter 2:24: He himself bore our sins in his body upon the cross, so that, free from sin, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

4. James 5:16: Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful.

In Catholic Theology we are taught the inherent dignity of EVERY human person, created in the image of God.

Restorative justice acknowledges the potential for change and growth.

Read more here.

I encourage you to watch the video here